Why are teenagers on TikTok obsessed with an eerie 1950s song?

為什么抖音上的青少年沉迷于20世紀50年代一首怪異的歌?

TikTok can make unknown tracks go stratospheric;Yet the app also uses its hit-making powers to give random songs a second life: decade-old singles,such as Mariah Carey's Obsessed and Jay Sean's RIDe It, have both enjoyed massive popularity spikes thanks to tie-in TikTok dance challenges.

抖音能讓不出名的歌曲走紅;甚至，它還憑借自身‘神曲制造機’的能力，隨緣給些歌曲帶來第二春，包括十年前的單曲，比如瑪麗亞.凱莉的Obsessed和杰，肖恩的Ride It,通過和抖音舞蹈挑戰賽聯動，這兩首歌都收獲了超高的人氣。

But they are far from the strangest songs to have been resurrected. Take for example, Spooky Scary Skeletons, a 1996 Halloween children's song by Golden Girls theme writer Andrew Gold. A remix of this novelty number currently soundtracks 2.6m TikTok videos thanks to, you guessed it, a viral dance challenge. Or even odder, the popularity of Tonight You Belong to Me, an eerily twee unrequited-love song made famous by sister act Patience and Prudence in 1956.

但它們絕不是被抖音再度帶火的最奇怪的歌曲，比如說，《黃 金女郎》主題曲的作詞人安德魯.戈爾德 為1996年萬圣節創作的兒歌Spooky Scary Skeletons,這首歌的混音版目前成為了260萬個抖音視頻的背景音樂，你猜對了，這都要歸功于一場熱門門的舞蹈挑戰。更為奇怪的，是Tonight YouBelong to Me的風靡，這是一首怪異而矯情、以愛而不得為主題的歌，姐妹組合Patience andPrudence在1956年將這首歌唱紅。

To the casual observer, it may seem as if these old songs have been plucked from the Internet's infinite music catalogue by the modern future-humans of Gen Z, who have identified some exciting and mysterious lure inaudible to anyone over the age of 21. The truth is far less strange:TikTok is simply echoing existing success stories.Spooky Scary Skeletons was already a massive hit on YouTube, thanks to a 2010 video that paired it with a vintage Disney animation.

在不上心的旁人眼中，這些被帶火的老歌似乎是由Z世代的新興人類從互聯網上無窮無盡的音樂目錄中摘取出來的，他們發現了一些令人興奮和神秘的誘惑之音，而21歲以上的人聽不懂這種音樂。事實遠沒有那么奇怪:抖音只是在復現已經取得成功的曲目。2010年，有人把Spooky Scary Skeletons這首歌和一支經典的迪士尼短片搭配在一起做了一支YouTube視頻，所以這首歌當時就已經在YouTube走紅了。

In fact, TikTok's penchant for excavating vintage tunes can be rather comforting: The global, never-ending talent show that is TikTok teenagerdommight seem horrifyingly newfangled, but it feels like a relief to know this tomorrow's world can't quite leave the past behind.

事實上，抖音挖掘老歌的傾向可能是相當令人欣慰的:在抖音這個平臺上，這場全球性的、永無止境的才藝秀是青少年的舞臺，它看上去似乎是令人害怕的新奇事物，但讓人如釋重負的地方在于，這個明天的世界無法完全把過去拋諸身后。